Sarah Oide
Esther Burnett Horne: Strategies for Resisting Colonial Thought in Wahpeton Indian School
Throughout the course so far, I have been most interested in our class discussions of how federal schools served as sites of collective resistance for Indigenous students, teachers, and staff. Although I broadly knew about the history of federal boarding schools and their goals of assimilation for Indigenous children before taking this course, I had never considered how individual teachers and school employees resisted these colonial ideals within schools to preserve a sense of cultural identity for their students. One passage that specifically challenged my preconceived ideas of boarding schools as a site solely used for assimilation was from educator Esther Burnett Horne who taught children from various tribal cultures at the Wahpeton Indian School in South Dakota. Horne recalled, “I had a deep-seated desire to
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Were there specific activities or reading materials that Horne used in her classroom that explicitly discussed tribal identity and cultural values? Or was it Horne’s mere existence in the school and daily interactions with her students as an Indigenous employee that offered a sense of pride and belonging for her students? And how did Horne learn about the varied tribal identities of her students and incorporate this knowledge to promote the sense of pride in a larger intertribal identity that Cahill describes? To gain greater insight into details behind Horne’s pedagogical choices, I believe it would be valuable to read Horne’s memoir and search for any additional student accounts or materials as evidence of the unique culture that she created within her